Monday: Financial secrets of the rich and powerful exposed in biggest ever leak of offshore data. Plus: is the pursuit of Inbox Zero an unwinnable war?

by Bermet Talant

Good morning. The biggest ever leak of offshore data has exposed the financial secrets of the world’s rich and powerful. A new report shows that people in insecure, lower-paid positions have been hardest hit by the pandemic. And Donald Trump has asked a court to force Twitter to restore his account.

The secret deals and hidden assets of some of the world’s richest and most powerful people have been revealed in the biggest trove of leaked offshore data in history. Branded the Pandora papers, the cache includes 11.9m files from companies hired by wealthy clients to create offshore structures and trusts in tax havens such as Panama, Dubai, Monaco, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. More than 600 journalists have sifted through the files as part of a massive global investigation.

The Pandora Papers revealed the details of how Asiaciti Trust, the Singaporean offshore services provider founded by the Australian accountant Graeme Briggs, handled its business relationship with high-profile Russians. The documents reveal alleged failings in Asiaciti’s compliance with anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism funding (AML-CTF) rules. They show Asiaciti’s regulator, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), cited Asiaciti’s handling of some transactions involving two of the Russians as examples of the business failing to adequately corroborate the source of its clients’ funds.

Read more on :https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/04/morning-mail-pandora-papers-sydney-familys-covid-battle-quest-for-inbox-zero?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1633291988

A peaceful protest held by activists of the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF), the youth organization of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), outside the Armenian Embassy in the U.S. has angered Armenia’s new Ambassador Lilit Makunts, who has called the police on them.

First, the embassy staff asked AYF protesters to leave, however they refused to heed the call, claiming that they were not violating the law.

The embassy then told the Secret Service employees to disperse the protest.

Today, on October 1, “Post-war Armenia. What steps should be taken? ”The third President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan responded to the statements of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Ali.

“You all know that a person who considers himself a man in the Caucasus does not talk to his opponent, gossip, rooster. As for how Ilham Ali used to behave in my presence, not only I remember it very well, but also the Minsk Group co-chairs and the leaders of their countries. If some forces gave you a present on a tray, remember that you, your father, lost to the previous three presidents of Armenia, both on the battlefield and in the field of diplomacy.

“You know better than anyone that if it were not for the change of power in Armenia in 2018 with the great support of foreign forces, you would have seen it with your own ears sooner than Shushi-Hadrut,” said Serzh Sargsyan. At the December 18 sitting of the CIS Council of Heads of State, Azerbaijani President Ilham Ali stated: “The army that was defeated is not Pashinyan’s army. It is an army created by Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan for 20 years. “

YEREVAN. – Iravunk daily of Armenia writes: According to the news we have received, Nikol Pashinyan, who works as Prime Minister in Armenia, is terrified again.

The thing is that the latter has further increased his own security.

Probably we all remember that after the 44-day [Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)] war [last fall], Nikol Pashinyan, according to press reports, had already increased his security. But it is not known why he is afraid again now.

Turkey’s presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın has said that Turkey is “looking positively to normalization” with Armenia following the end of the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia for the control of Nagorno-Karabakh, Duvar news agency reported. 

“In principle, we are looking positively to normalization with Armenia. The basic reason for our ending diplomatic relations with Armenia and closing our borders in 1992 was the invasion of the Nagorno-Karabakh. Since this problem has been solved, there is in fact no obstacle standing in front of our normalization with Armenia. But there are still issues to be solved in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue,” Kalın said on Sept. 28 during an interview on Haber Global TV channel.

“The ceasefire agreement has been signed, but a peace agreement has not been yet struck. The conditions of this will be talked; both sides will give approval. This process is continuing. Armenia does not just consist of Armenia; there are many other elements. But this agreement would be for the benefit of Armenia,” Kalın said, as quoted by the source. 

He further said that President Erdoğan had already sent positive signals in support of the normalization process. Kalın said that the restoring of ties between Armenia and Azerbaijan would also benefit Turkey and “bring peace to the whole region.”

“With regards to the normalization issue with Armenia, our President has also made positive statements. In the meantime, if we also cover a distance by solving [Armenia’s] problems with Azerbaijan, this would also relieve us. The peace agreement will bring peace to the whole region,” Kalın said.

This report summarizes the cases of civilian casualties, caused as a result of the military aggression unleashed by Azerbaijan and Turkey against the Artsakh Republic since September 27, 2020, as well as killings of civilians who were imprisoned in the areas passed under the control of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces. The cases are introduced with relevant brief information. 

From September 27, 2020 to September 27, 2021, during the fact-finding activities of the Staff of the Ombudsman of the Artsakh Republic, 80 civilians were identified who were killed by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces. 42 of them were killed as a result of targeted strikes, 38 – in captivity. A number of cases of torture and mutilation of corpses, inevitably targeted civilian deaths were recorded. The Human Rights Ombudsman also recorded the cases of 163 civilian injuries, most of which resulted from strikes that resulted in the deaths of others. The circumstances of gross, deliberate and systematic violations of the right to life and other rights of the civilian population of the Artsakh Republic are presented in Sections 2 and 3. The gerenal statistics on the civilian casualties are presented below.

Read more: https://artsakhombuds.am/en/document/785?fbclid=IwAR2dGss2_e6gpVHeQ5OzBv_5t8W4taaiPu4V_eI4t8heR95MmjI00uH_rv8

By Michael Rubin, The National Interest

One year ago today, the Azerbaijani army, backed by Turkish Special Forces and Syrian jihadis acting as Turkish mercenaries, launched a surprise attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory which Armenia controlled since the end of the 1988-94 Nagorno-Karabakh War. While Azerbaijan justified its actions in the fact that the international community recognized the territory as Azerbaijani, the situation was more complex.

Legally, at least from Washington’s perspective, Azerbaijan’s case is not as cut-and-dry as its proponents claim. First, the United States continue to recognize the Republic of Armenia as an occupied nation after Joseph Stalin gerrymandered its borders and incorporated it into the Soviet Union. Also, when in 1991, Azerbaijan re-asserted its independence upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, its parliament did so based on the borders of the first independent Republic of Azerbaijan and not upon the territory of the subsequent Soviet-created Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Third, the population of the autonomous oblast voted to secede from Azerbaijani control, a move that was constitutionally valid.

The diplomatic case is as important. While Azerbaijani authorities never accepted Armenia’s control over Nagorno-Karabakh and several Azerbaijani districts that separated the territory from Armenia proper, Baku had committed as part of the Minsk Group process to resolve the territorial dispute diplomatically. While Azerbaijani diplomats might say the progress was going nowhere, that was a lie: There was broad consensus within the Minsk Group about the dispatch of peacekeepers, likely from disinterested Scandinavian countries, as well as the eventual Armenian return of occupied Azerbaijani districts as confidence grew. Regardless, the State Department had, six months before Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev ordered the assault, waived provisions of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act to enable U.S. assistance to flow to Azerbaijan. The basis of that waiver was Azerbaijan’s commitment to the diplomatic process.

That Azerbaijan surprised not only Armenians but also Americans remains an intelligence failure that both Congress and the broader U.S. intelligence community have so far failed to investigate. Nor can any honest analyst ignore the fact that the invasion coincided with the one-hundredth anniversary of the Ottoman invasion of independent Armenia against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide. This was not a coincidence but deliberate. Simply put, Azerbaijan and Turkey’s move constituted an opening salvo in what both countries’ leaders hoped would amount to an Armenian Genocide version 2.0.

In the aftermath of the invasion, the State Department under both Secretaries of State Mike Pompeo and then Antony Blinken recommitted the United States to diplomacy. Andrew Schofer, the Minsk Group’s American co-chair, returned to the region to try to jumpstart diplomacy.

Unfortunately, through no fault of Schofer’s, Blinken and President Joe Biden bungled it. Biden was right to recognize officially the Armenian Genocide. However, the following day, Blinken quietly waived Section 907 again, effectively rewarding Azerbaijan for its aggression. By both the letter and the spirit of the Freedom Support Act, Blinken’s move violated U.S. law, though Congress has been too distracted to hold him to account and force the waiver’s reversal. While National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Blinken may have thought an olive branch appropriate to keep Azerbaijan at the table, the net effect was to eviscerate any American leverage and to telegraph to Aliyev that the United States was weak.

A short survey of the past six months shows that far from returning to diplomacy, American passivity is enabling increased Azerbaijani aggression. On March 25, 2021, Azerbaijani soldiers threw stones at Armenian civilian cars on the Sarushen-Karmir Shuka road in Artsakh’s Askeran region. Three days later, Azerbaijani troops ambushed an Armenian vehicle transporting the bodies of Armenian soldiers killed in the forty-four-day war. On April 20, Azerbaijani forces fired at an Armenian home on Vagharshyan Street in the Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh, the self-governing Armenian republic in Nagorno-Karabakh. Despite Azerbaijan’s diplomatic promises to respect religious freedom, on April 26, three Azerbaijani soldiers beat and dragged an Armenian pastor in Syunik’s Aravus village. Two days later, between eight and ten Azerbaijanis in civilian dress infiltrated the buffer zone between the two sides, before being chased off by Armenian forces. In effect, Azerbaijan’s constant probing and attempts at infiltration appear to take a page from North Korea’s playbook vis-à-vis South Korea.

In May 2021, such violations increased. Azerbaijan began a show trial for Lebanese Armenian Vicken Euljekjian, kidnapped by Azerbaijani forces after the November 9, 2020, ceasefire; he remains in prison. On May 12, 2021, Azerbaijani forces moved two miles into Armenian territory in the Syunik region to seize Sev Lich. Such unilateral “border adjustments” continued over subsequent days. On May 14, for example, Azerbaijani Armed Forces advanced another 300 to 400 meters toward Vardenis in Armenia proper. Azerbaijani forces have also continued to fire across the border at Armenian soldiers in Armenia’s Gegharkunik Province. A similar attack on Artsakh’s Sos village injured a civilian. The lack of any serious American diplomatic pushback simply caused Aliyev to become more aggressive. At around 9:10 pm on May 20, several Azerbaijani soldiers entered Armenia. Armenian soldiers intercepted and, in the resulting brawl, almost a dozen were injured. Less than a week later, Azerbaijani forces killed Armenian Sergeant Gevorg Y. Khurshudyan near the village of Verin Shorzha, in Armenia proper. Two days later, Azerbaijan kidnapped six Armenian soldiers doing engineering work near the Gegharkunik border. Once again, Aliyev appeared to take a page from the North Korean playbook. And, once again, Blinken was silent. Up to 1,000 Azerbaijani troops remain in Armenia proper, according to Artak Davtyan, Armenia’s chief of the General Staff.

In June, such aggression accelerated yet again. Azerbaijani soldiers, perhaps hungry as Azerbaijani officials embezzled military supplies, fired on shepherds in Armenia and stole their cattle. Armenian soldiers stopped another attempt to steal horses from a shepherd in Gegharkunik. Nor are Armenians the only victims. In June 2021, Azerbaijani soldiers threatened to execute Spanish journalists reporting from the Armenian side of the border and, the next month, Azerbaijani raids on livestock as well as sniping attacks—some fatal— and skirmishes continued across the Armenian border. As the Biden administration remained silent, Azerbaijan increased the severity of attacks. Small arms sniping evolved into the firing of mortars across the border, for example, and ceasefires proved fleeting. In August, Azerbaijani forces took a page from Islamic State actions in Iraq and Syria and began setting fire to Armenian crops and grassland.

Both the office of the Artsakh ombudsman and Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights have begun collecting evidence, documenting such attacks in earnest. Armenia’s Ministry of Defense also announces the deaths of its soldiers as they occur.

Perhaps the biggest Azerbaijani affront, however, is the continued holding and torture of Armenian prisoners of war (POW). While the State Department might make occasional calls for their return, Azerbaijani authorities dismiss these as readily as the Taliban does Blinken’s calls for diversity in the Taliban cabinet. After all, when Blinken waives sanctions on Azerbaijan to allow American funding to flow to Baku, why should Aliyev take American statements seriously? Nor can Biden or Blinken expect Russia or Turkey to take them seriously when Blinken does not demand that Russia publicize its peacekeeping and monitoring reports which, as a party to the Minsk Group, it is legally obliged to do. Nor has Biden yet to take substantive action against Turkey for its use of American components in the drones its uses to target not only Armenians but also Kurds and perhaps even Tigrayan Christians.

Biden and Blinken may not care about American prestige, but this is not the only thing at issue in the South Caucasus. Azerbaijan and Turkey launched their assault on Nagorno-Karabakh to continue the Ottoman project of more than a century ago. Silence encourages them and others. The precedent of ethnic cleansing that they undertake—and the lack of any serious response to it—could destabilize areas far beyond the South Caucasus. So too is American silence regarding the Turkish and Azerbaijani use of Syrian jihadis, some with previous service in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. It behooves Biden and Blinken to show that this is a red line. Nor does it make sense to reward Azerbaijan financially when it is no longer the stable, tolerant ally Washington once believed it to be, but rather does increasing business with both Russia and Iran. It is time to sanction Azerbaijan until Aliyev returns the last Armenian POW, pays compensation for his aggression, and holds accountable every Azerbaijani soldier on video torturing Armenians or destroying cultural heritage.

Jackie Abramian Contributor, Forbes

A year ago today–on September 27, 2020–The Republic of Azerbaijan, with Turkey’s full military support and over 1,000 trafficked Syrian jihadist mercenaries, launched a war against the indigenous Armenians in the disputed territories of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh). Throughout the 44-day war, Azerbaijan’s indiscriminate use of cluster munitions, drones, and artillery rockets included phosphorous bombs which scorched forests causing severe burns among soldiers and civilians.

Among other heinous war crimes, the Azeri military posted social media videos boasting beheadings and torture of captured Armenian civilians and military. A strong-arm trilateral agreement on November 10, 2020, negotiated between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, ended the war and stationed 2,000 Russian peacekeeping troops in Artsakh. 

The spoils of the war left nearly two-thirds of the indigenous Armenian lands in Artsakh occupied by Azerbaijan. With over 5,000 Armenians killed, 110,000 displaced, 10,000 fighters wounded and 200 POWs detained illegally in Azerbaijan prisons and tortured–there are still hundreds of unaccounted Armenian MIAs. 

A year later, the Azeri assaults on the Armenian population continue. In the occupied Hadrut Region, Azeri soldiers desecrated Armenian cemeteries. The French Journalist, J-Christophe Buisson tweeted about the masked armed Azeri soldiers who stopped the Artsakh Armenian youth soccer team bus on its way to Armenia for a soccer match. Using a dagger to scrape off the Artsakh flag from the surface of the bus, the soldiers inspected the war-traumatized children’s phones, stating Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan.

Last month during a CNN Turk interview, Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev had a warning. “…if Armenian fascism tries to raise its head ever again, we will crush it again. The defeat in the second Karabakh war should be a lesson for them……It seems that the second Karabakh war has not been a lesson for everyone yet. If this is the case, then we are ready to teach them another lesson.”MORE FOR YOUSpring Health Notches A $190 Million Series C At A $2 Billion Valuation, Making CEO April Koh The Youngest Woman To Run A UnicornThe Secret To Being The Wildly Popular Mayor Of Miami? Surround Yourself With Amazing Latina WomenHow To Stand Out In A Competitive Industry

The U.S. House of Representatives on September 23, passed the Cardenas-Schiff-Sherman amendment demanding Azerbaijan “immediately and unconditionally return all Armenian” POWs and captive civilians. It also called for a report on Azerbaijani war crimes, use of illegal munitions and white phosphorus against Armenian civilians, and an investigation into the use of U.S. technology in Turkish drones that targeted Armenian civilians during the 2020 war.

The Republic of Armenia “instituted proceedings against the Republic of Azerbaijan before the International Court of Justice,” the principal judicial organ of the UN. Earlier this year, Armenia also filed interstate complaints against Turkey with the European Court of Human Rights.

“Human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law were widespread after Artsakh was attacked. Mercenaries and jihadis were deployed from Syria and Libya under Turkey’s command. These perpetrators were responsible for horrific crimes, which are ongoing despite the ceasefire agreement. Columbia University’s Artsakh Atrocities Project has been documenting events. We hope that the information we’ve compiled can be used to hold Turkey and its cohorts accountable for its wanton abuse of civilians, including women and children, as well as cultural crimes,” says David L. Phillips, Director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights Institute for the Study of Human Rights, at Columbia University.

While Azerbaijan refutes the legal right to self-determination of the Armenian population of Artsakh, last year’s war echoed memories of September Days 1918 and the systematic extermination of nearly 15,000 Armenians in Nakhichevan and Artsakh. Similar to their brethren Ottoman Turks’ occupation of Armenian properties and landmarks during the 1915 Genocide of 1.5 million Armenians, Azerbaijan continues desecrating Artsakh’s churches, ancient cemeteries, sacred cathedrals and historic sites dating back a millennium. 

Citing recent Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) report, Hakim Bishara reports in Hyperallergic how “over a dozen Armenian churches, cemeteries, sacred cross-stones (Khachkars), and other cultural properties have either been destroyed, damaged, or threatened by Azerbaijan.” Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev ordered the removal of medieval Armenian inscriptions from churches, calling them “fake” and rebranding the sites as “ancient Azerbaijani” landmarks.  The 2019 groundbreaking forensic reportage in Hyperallergic by Sarah Pickman and Simon Maghakyan details Azerbaijan’s long history of erasure and destruction of indigenous Armenian sites including “89 medieval churches, 5,840 intricate cross-stones, and 22,000 tombstones.”

Well-Paid U.S. PR Agencies, Lobby Groups Ensure Azerbaijan’s Cover-Ups

Well-orchestrated PR campaign machinery, constructed in advance of last September’s war by high-end U.S. PR agencies and lobby groups, orchestrated a widespread misinformation campaign against Armenia, as Azerbaijan carpet bombed Artsakh. Anti-Armenian reports and articles germinated across top media outlets most prominently led by Carlotta Gall, The New York Times’ Istanbul bureau chief. International organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued pro-Azerbaijan reports accusing Armenia of instigating the war, and then changed their claims.  DataPoint Armenia offered the most comprehensive 

analysis on the “social media narrative warfare during the war” or “astroturfing” concluding that pro-Armenian social posts had “small effect on international audiences.”

While diaspora Armenian communities demanded justice against the Azerbaijan-Turkey alliance, diaspora Turks unleashed hate crimes defacing Armenian churches, schools and cemeteries. When France sent humanitarian relief aid to Artsakh, calling for the region’s recognition, Azerbaijan’s parliament called for France “to be stripped of its mediation role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to punish the French Senate.” 

Neither Azerbaijan nor Turkey has earned human rights awards in recent years. 

Documenting War Crimes Against Erasure

Democracy Today NGO’s report “Never Again–44-day war: war crimes and international law”  documented the Azeri/Turkish war crimes during and after the 44-day war and attacks on civil population, children, journalists, members of humanitarian missions, and religious, cultural, and educational institutions and civil property. The report documents Azeri torture and inhumane treatment of civilians and some 200 POWs–filed and referred to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) by the Government of Armenia as a permanent documentation for world history of crimes committed by Azerbaijan and Turkey. 

Formed in November 2020, the Center for Truth & Justice (CFTJ) provides “a voice to victims of human rights violations.” The unaffiliated, all-volunteer NGO is run by approximately 25 American-Armenian attorneys, who oversee a law clinic in Armenia and train local law students and young lawyers to collect evidence through witness interviews with survivors of the 44-day war. To date, CFTJ has conducted nearly 150 interviews and trained 100 people in Armenia and Artsakh to obtain testimonial evidence.

“What CFTJ does is bear witness to the stories of war survivors, create a record of the stories, and secure the records so that no one can ever try to rewrite the stories. In a world of fake news, where the truth constantly gets buried, we believe firsthand testimonies are one of the last few reliable sources of evidence,” says Tamara Voskanian, an ethics attorney and one of CFTJ founders, who explains how interview questions are designed to garner evidence to support legal prosecutions. After the interviews conclude, the evidence collected is categorized into potential legal causes of action. CFTJ has already provided evidence to lawyers in several countries who are working on cases in their own jurisdictions.

Since most CFTJ volunteers, both inside and outside Armenia, are women, interviews often present challenging cultural dynamics when the witness is male, and the interviewers are female. In the traditional patriarchal Armenian society, men are often discouraged from opening-up and being vulnerable–critical components of a successful interview–so CFTJ’s training guides the law students and lawyers around such complexities. Female interviewers are taught to establish their neutral authority early on and to build trust with their witnesses prior to recording any discussions.

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackieabramian/2021/09/27/a-year-after-unleashing-war-crimes-against-indigenous-armenians-azerbaijans-threats-and-violations-continue/?sh=32e31d188cc1